Playing Fair

Sometimes in Magic: The Gathering (as well as in real life) it's hard to play fair.  This isn't due to pre-ordained cheating strategies or even 'forgetting' to activate triggers but due to things that occur outside the game.

This realisation came after organising the first real sanctioned tournament at Digital Dragons in Lichfield and coming away the winner - with a deck I'd designed to either win fast or loose fast.  It turns out that just having a good card pool to pull from and throwing together a green and white humans deck made almost entirely out of promotional rares can do quite a lot!  The deck was essentially Fateful hour based which meant that it punished the other player a little too much and wasn't all that fun.

In the run up to the second 'big' tournament (we schedule casual events frequently when there happen to be games in store) I decided to make a deck that was competitive but would be fun to loose to, and hopefully fun to beat.

Here is my basic mana curve:

As you can see (if you tilt your head) this is all the Angel creature cards from Innistrad block. And the 1 M12 Angel too. And Angelic Wall as I figured it was lonely.  There are some very overpowered (in terms of the players that may turn up's collections) cards here in the 5 AVR Mythic Rares, but this time they are singletons. No more will they have to battle through multiple copies of the same depressing Humans - now there are Singleton Angels to have to read - if I can race up the mana curve.  I figured that this strategy will give me a lot of variability, while also allowing me to try out the new cards in a fun setting.

Last time I put up all the prizes and intend to do the same again - I skipped myself and started the prizes at 2nd and 3rd place.  This means I'm not too worried if I do happen to win, but I am worried that the less experienced players won't have as much fun.  This is reflected in my support cards.

I've put in Borderland Ranger instead of Scorned Villager, but kept the Avacyn's Pilgrims.

I've dropped Ponder entirely and reduced Gitaxian Probe to a two of in favour  of Fleeting Distraction (it has little fairies in the art to help with the theme).

I am playing 4 Seraph's Sanctuary and 4 Scroll of Avacyn.  I'm also starting with all basic lands, with the 9 dual lands hiding in my sideboard for when I face the couple of experienced players that will be going.

I also have a few more tricks that should help the deck plough through it's cards in search of it's 18 Angels and help with the multicolour deck.  I will post back a report next week.